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Mass Effect 3's latest DLC package, Omega, returns to the single-player campaign with the story of the retaking of Omega, which used to be a perfectly respectable hive of scum and villainy, from shadowy criminal agency Cerberus and return it to the shadowy criminal agencies which previously ran it. However, it faces a greater enemy than Cerberus troopers - the narrative traditions of the Western canon.

Whatever your feelings about the ending of Mass Effect 3 - all of which are valid as feelings - it has undeniably caused a problem for the creation of DLC. For all the unhappiness around the "Day One DLC" issue - that is, content on the disc being unlocked by a further payment rather than downloaded - From Ashes at least had the advantage of existing before the ending was common knowledge. And the problem? The ending is cosmic in scale, and also to a greater or lesser extent predetermined.

(Spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3 and its existing DLC follow, in case you have managed to avoid it thus far.)

Baked into the narrative structure of Mass Effect 3 is that a victory by conventional forces is, fundamentally, impossible. This is baked, in fact, into the entire narrative tradition from which it draws. The armies of the west are valorous, but they are relatively few. The hero-king can rally them, but ultimately the victory has to be won by the hero protagonist, with the help and sacrifice of his mismatched band of allies, representing the best of the various free peoples.

Mass Effect is essentially Lord of the Rings with spaceships and alien strippers. I don't think this is pulling up any conceptual trees. The need for one man (or, in this case, possibly woman) to make a difference has been part of the western tradition since the Iliad.

The problem with this is that, once you have finished the game, you know this, in an absolute as well as a formal sense. If you rally every force available in the game, the ending changes - but in terms of the casualties sustained by the armies of the free while they buy time for the hero to do his (or, in this case, possibly her) hero thing.

So, the presence of the mightiest warrior of the Protheans, the last race to give the Reapers anything like a proper scrap? Ultimately of minimal impact. An alliance with the race ultimately responsible for creating the Reapers in the first place? Again, the strategic impact has to be managed down so that the core narrative is unchanged. Commander Shepard could recruit God him (or, in this case, possibly her) self, and it would not affect this ultimate narrative.

This was my problem with the Leviathan DLC: by the time it came out, I already understood both the mechanics of the narrative and the specific impact of war assets and combat readiness on the ending of the game. As such, it was already clear that, no matter how massive and powerful the mysterious Leviathan might be, it would have to be nerfed within the narrative.

Back to the streets

With this is mind, the return to Cerberus, the miniboss (or, if you'd rather, the Saruman) of the Mass Effect 3 narrative could be a good move. Because Cerberus is not the final boss, it is possible to mess with them a little more (although, of course, we already know that any coup worth grace-ing is going to be delivered by Commander Shepard, because that is how big damn heroing works).

The story of Aria, and her journey from sardonic high school girl and student at Lawndale High to criminal boss of Omega, has some interesting possibilities for broadening out the world of Mass Effect. We get to see what female Turians are like (and thus what FemShep is up against in her quest for her One True Pairing). And, because it wouldn't be Mass Effect without zombies, we get another kind of zombie - in this case the Adjutant, a Reaper creation converted for use by Cerberus.

Peak zombie. I'm calling it.

Fundamentally, the same problem occurs: whereas the DLC for Mass Effect 2 added meaningful context to the overarching three-part story, and helped to bridge to the massively raised stakes of Mass Effect 3, the final part of the trilogy is a closed loop. Not only does no action taken in the DLC significantly affect the ending, but it can't affect the ending. With that said, Omega will no doubt contain some snappy dialog, fun set-pieces and some insight into the characters (it may be too much to hope for Aria to have been keeping records on the crew of the Normandy, but one of the joys of the Shadow Broker DLC was reading through the supporting cast's mail).

Also, Aria and Shepard might snog. Really, does anyone spend any time saving the galaxy any more? If the Fellowship had been getting busy as frenetically as the Alliance, Sauron would have conquered Middle Earth by default.

Mass Effect 3: Omega DLC will be released on 27 November in North America for PS3, XBox 360 and PS3.